Barcelona ‘wins’ worst traffic in Spain award

Traffic in the Catalan capital is almost 20 percent slower when the city’s streets are gridlocked, the Tom Tom Annual Report 2012 reveals. This puts Barcelona in 42nd spot among the 161 cities covered by the index, El Periódico reported on Thursday. The Tom Tom index measures travel times in “free-flow periods” against trip duration during peak hours. Drivers in Barcelona spend an average of 25 minutes per hour at a standstill in peak congestion periods.
This means that a driver in the northern Spanish city who makes a 30-minute trip to work everyday during rush hours spends 67 hours a year in traffic jams. Other congested cites in Spain are Palma de Mallorca, with an index rating of 15.8 percent and Madrid at 14.1 percent. The worst cities in Europe for impatient drivers are Moscow (66 percent), Istanbul, at 55 percent, and Warsaw in Poland. Traffic in the Catalan capital is almost 20 percent slower when the city’s streets are gridlocked, the Tom Tom Annual Report 2012 reveals. This puts Barcelona in 42nd spot among the 161 cities covered by the index, El Periódico reported on Thursday. The Tom Tom index measures travel times in “free-flow periods” against trip duration during peak hours. Drivers in Barcelona spend an average of 25 minutes per hour at a standstill in peak congestion periods. This means that a driver in the northern Spanish city who makes a 30-minute trip to work everyday during rush hours spends 67 hours a year in traffic jams. Other congested cites in Spain are Palma de Mallorca, with an index rating of 15.8 percent and Madrid at 14.1 percent. The worst cities in Europe for impatient drivers are Moscow (66 percent), Istanbul, at 55 percent, and Warsaw in Poland.